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Allyn Feinberg: Benefits of rooftop solar

Posted:
04/01/2014 01:00:00 AM MDT

Regarding Eric Blank’s letter (March 28) on the value of large centrally-located solar versus small distributed solar: Mr. Blank’s companies have contributed significantly to moving Xcel in the direction of renewable energy. And his latest project, a large solar farm near Pueblo, is certainly a lot better than Xcel’s investment in coal plants, such as its huge Comanche 3 plant near Pueblo, or the coal plants whose lifetimes were extended under the “Clean Air Clean Jobs Act.”

But even as a non-technical person, it’s clear to me that these large solar installations have their downsides.

With a huge solar array in one spot, a small area of cloud cover can turn the hundreds of megawatts on and off in an instant. But with rooftop solar distributed over many square miles, like in Boulder, the effects are much more diffuse and gradual, which makes providing backup power much easier.

Energy generated by solar in Pueblo must be transmitted about 150 miles to Boulder, which will incur significant transmission losses. Distributed solar has almost no transmission losses.

Putting all the solar in a huge solar farm requires that it be connected via the grid, which makes it essentially useless whenever the grid goes down. Distributed solar can be set up to operate directly to the load in an emergency.

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Finally, although not a downside of a large solar installation, as the cost of solar continues to plummet, more and more people will want to invest in their own installation in order to escape Xcel’s perpetual rate increases. No matter what solar farms Xcel has to buy into, Xcel’s big investments are in fossil fuel plants, and its customers will be forced to pay these plants off at Xcel’s high rate of return.

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